Lunchbox Favorites: A Throwback

Dodgeball. Track and field day. Recess… There was a time when these words were what made us tick, when all that mattered was whether you could feasibly be cast as your favorite Disney princess. That, of course, along with what was packed in your lunchbox.

Hot lunch was only cool on pizza and chicken nugget days in my hometown, with macaroni and cheese in as close a third as possible. So rather than stash our hot lunch tickets in our Lisa Frank pencil cases, the obvious choice was hardly your choice at all. Your parents packed it, and you ate it, so they thought. But we all know better. Lunch was a trading game.

Long before we were coveting Gucci bags and Tory Burch flats, ladies, there was a time where the following items were the only accessories of importance. Below are my top five snack foods from childhood lunches, most of which I had to argue my parents for, or trade for:

1) Little Debbie ANYTHING. Zebra Cakes, Swiss Cake Rolls, lots of cake-age going on. These were the crème-de-la-crème of snacking and what made suffering through yet another PB&J worthwhile.

2) Snack bags of Doritos/Fritos/insert chip of choice here. Whose parents ACTUALLY let them eat chips at lunchtime? The cool kids, obviously. The rest of us dealt with pretzels and carrot sticks… but the cool parents (who likely turned into the parents buying alcohol for their childrens’ parties in high school) always came through with the chips.

3) Dunkaroos. Any snack food that let me choose how much frosting goes on each cookie was automatically badass.

4) Twinkies. Something about the cream filling just sold everyone on these—in retrospect, we could’ve done better. But at the time, it definitely trumped an apple or fruit snacks.

5) Homemade cookies. No-bake, chocolate chip, peanut butter, anything with the exception of oatmeal raisin, which basically is just a waste of a cookie anyway. My friends would always just ogle my Ziploc baggie chock-full of deliciousness, newly dissatisfied with their Chips Ahoy. And it was awesome.